Redshirt
. Leslie, killed by a dikironium cloud creature on Argus X. He later recovered.]] kills two redshirts...]] Redshirt is a term used by fans and staff of Star Trek to refer first to the characters who wear red Starfleet uniforms, and secondly to refer to those characters which are expendable, and quite often killed off, sometimes in great numbers. :Please see the List of Starfleet casualties for a complete summary of crew losses. In the Original Series era, red uniforms were worn by members of the operations division, normally performing security, engineering or support services (such as communications officers, administrators and yeomen) aboard starships and starbases. Of these, the security personnel were quite expendable. TOS: "The Changeling", "The Apple", and "Obsession" in TOS Season 2 all featured four security redshirts dying in each episode. "The Changeling" has the most anonymity involved, all four that die are unnamed. In "The Apple", Kaplan, Marple, Hendorf and Mallory were all on one security team, killed one by one by the dangers of Gamma Trianguli VI. In "Obsession", the dikironium cloud creature kills four security guards that we see, all in red shirts, including Ensign Rizzo. It also kills a few crewman aboard the ship, but we didn't get to see what color their shirts were. One of the vampire cloud's victims doesn't quite count — Mr. Leslie would have been a fifth red-shirted fellow killed in the outing, but a mention of him surviving was cut from the shoot of the episode. He clearly appears in later episodes, so either he has a twin, or he survived the attack. In terms of pure expendability, TOS: "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is the first and best in terms of numbers: Twelve crewpeople were lost; nine of them died instantly at the galactic barrier, and three more perished in the events at Delta Vega. We only saw those three die onscreen, but we know that none of them were technically redshirts, as there were no red uniforms of the design they used in that episode, reused from TOS: "The Cage" (which itself featured three offscreen deaths). The operations division was wearing beige at this point. died in 2370.]] Nobody was really lost in The Animated Adventures, but Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced a new twist to the "redshirt" lore, as the uniform colors switched and operations division wore the gold uniforms and the command division took on the red shirts. They also became likely to die, a theme of crew deaths was dominated by the continuous loss of their flight controller. Lieutenant Torres probably survived TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint," but the TNG era lost Haskell, Monroe, Dern, Nell Chilton, Hawk and Branson. Even the survivors usually got roughed up, the longest people to hold the position, Wesley Crusher and Ro Laren, both ended up leaving Starfleet. The only TNG episodes to feature death in large numbers were to do with the Borg. TNG: "Q Who?", "The Best of Both Worlds, Parts I" and "Part II," both which noted 18 offscreen deaths (although the latter probably totalled up a few more in later scenes). The ''Star Trek'' Movies kept the crew losses low for the most part, but the TOS era installments were dominated by redshirt deaths, as the dominant uniform style featured all personnel wearing red. Star Trek Generations noted that crew losses from the fall of the 1701-D were low, however Star Trek II, Star Trek: First Contact, and Star Trek Nemesis all featured scores of battle-related crew deaths. As noted, the Wrath of Khan losses were all redshirts, but the TNG losses were more varied, but continued their pattern of conn officer attrition. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine featured many security personnel — such as Ensign Paul Gordon in DS9: "Rocks and Shoals" — and engineers dying, sometimes in large numbers, however there was no pattern of red-shirted crew loss until command officers were noted as dying in the war story arcs that dominated the last half of the series. However the first known redhsirt death on DS9 came when an unnamed officer was killed in Ops by the Cardassian counter insurgency program (DS9: "Civil Defense") The redshirted conn officer of the USS Defiant was also killed during the ships first battle with Dominion forces (DS9: "The Search") While this maintains the tradition of TOS's most dangerous areas to work, these officers wore yellow shirts by this era. In the Dominion War especially entire fleets of starships were biting the dust, indiscriminate of shirt color. died at her post in 2371.]] In Star Trek: Voyager, most initial crew deaths were in red, such as Cavit and Stadi (who was another flight controller). However, over the years it became clear that any color or department was dangerous in the Delta Quadrant. Since ''Voyager'' had no way to replace crew, the only massive deaths took place in alternate timelines. Star Trek: Enterprise lost more engineers and MACOs than anyone else, consistent with their evolution into the Starfleet security forces. Both wear red as a department color (although MACOs seemed to wear splatter camouflage more than anything). Background Information David Gerrold has often joked that the redshirt character he played in DS9's "Trials and Tribble-ations" must have been the luckiest redshirt ever, to have lived long enough for his hair to have turned gray! Star Trek: Enterprise producer and writer Mike Sussman, a longtime fan himself, fulfilled a lifelong dream by putting on an Original Series red shirt to portray a dead crewman aboard the starship ''Defiant'' in "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II". :Sussman's trousers were the same ones worn by Gerrold during his DS9 cameo some eight years prior (Gerrold's name was stitched in them). Sussman's TOS-style boots had been worn previously by Avery Brooks. Cultural references , redshirted engineer Welshie was killed.]] The icon of the doomed red-shirted crewman has translated to a number of other pop culture and literary media and parodies. ;Futurama : A character created to replace James Doohan as Scotty in the cast was named Welshie. He (or more specifically, the actor who played him) was killed, dismembered, and vaporized by three separate blasts from a cloud creature named Melllvar. ;Family Guy : An ensign named Ricky was frustrated at being the only redshirt assigned to a landing party uniform, but ended up surviving long enough to comment on William Shatner's death. ;South Park : One of the children on a trapped schoolbus wore a red commander uniform, with ''Enterprise assignment patch. He went outside the bus to scout around and was promptly eaten by a monster while TOS background music played. ;Lost : Boone tells Locke that redshirts always get killed and Locke comment that Kirk "must have been a piss-poor captain". :See also: Star Trek parodies de:Redshirt Category:Star Trek